imeeji_frontstage

Live!!

Who: resident dragon man and you
Where: Lobby
When: 184 morning

Good morning, everyone! I've decided now is the best time for us all to have another debate, now that our guests have been excused.

As many of you know, most of those guests were like me. Damned from other shows, instructed to take part in the show to make it more entertaining. During the week, we all saw and did many things, and hopefully, no one is holding much of a grudge.

Especially toward Future is Now, because I offered to murder, but they refused, and tried to protect as many people as possible, and we still were victorious, some how. So they should be applauded!

That aside, there was also that. . .live. As someone who has also stabbed a child, it made me think. How exactly do I want to reach my goals, and what should I sacrifice to get there? Personally, I don't think my stance has changed much, but we definitely shouldn't stab children. Only deimos! So I apologize for my brash actions from before.

So my question for the rest of you, even though violence can't be completely avoided here, when is it an appropriate first choice of action? I imagine many of you may have had to make extremely hard calls this week, so I have to wonder. Please discuss.

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[ pinching the bridge of her nose before speaking ]

You might be speaking with me, but you're really not listening.
I told you already that, when I made that proposal, I saw it as advocating for what was, essentially, natural death—like going to Lethe—not the torture and complete erasure of the soul that you describe. And, even though there is no proof that your view of it is correct, I'm still willing to take it extremely seriously. But that is not good enough.

I came to Requiem as a friend, and backed off in the same conversation. I'm glad that she took it seriously enough to indeed bring it up with the rest of you, but from the start I understood you were more likely to prefer your own version of justice. But that is not good enough.

At the end of the day, your problem with me seemingly comes down to the fact that I have morals at all.

There's plenty of proof that my view of it is correct. I experienced that torture firsthand. We know turning gray turns you into a Damned, which means you live in Hell as a formless shadow with no identity. People have seen them. The rest of Hell that isn't Liar or Vengeance Hell is apparently full of them. We know all that.

And you can have whatever morals you want. But no one put you in charge. You don't get to decide the right thing to do for other people.

I swear I am not trying to decide. As you pointed out earlier, it is true that i am angry, and I am tired of how no lasting change seems to happen when someone commits even the foulest act. And hence I am to the point of considering extremes.

But I do not claim it is my decision alone—nor would I wish it to be.

...As for the Damned... [ softer, more thinking aloud than anything ]
We know they can come back from it—LiliS is not the only unit to have had members of that kind. They aren't gone... but perhaps they have been trapped. And that's surely cruel and unnatural, too.

We also don't know that anyone who recovered was actually a complete shadow like that. They've been gray, or they've lost things... Some of them permanently replaced. That's apparently why people end up with wings or scales or whatever, to patch over whatever's missing, right? If someone really lost everything I don't know that they'd be able to come back.

Perhaps not.
At that point, though, they're not really meant to—applying Creation's understanding of death, that is. But even then, it's true that they don't seem to reincarnate, or move on in any way. That is the part which, I must concede, concerns even me.

[...]

Well, maybe next time don't suggest something like that if even you have concerns.

It is not that I did not already consider it an extreme measure, but—

I'm just thinking about it in more detail now, and more critically. It is not often that you learn that even an experience as universal as death isn't necessarily the same across worlds.

It would be worth considering, regardless, as part of trying to understand this place, but to be very frank I am also critiquing my own view as a gesture of good faith.

So without me challenging you on it. you wouldn't consider it critically before going forward with it?

I'm not that rash, but no, I really didn't think "how death works" was subject to debate, so that wasn't the part of the idea I'd been questioning.

I've actually been thinking about it as an option for some time now. Asking myself what I would do if someone I knew became truly and irredeemably dangerous.

You realize that makes it sound like you were just looking for an opportunity, right? You figured out a punishment that would make you feel like you were actually doing something useful, and then the moment someone did something really bad where you saw them, they suddenly couldn't be stopped by any other method and had to be removed immediately.

Edited 2019-12-17 07:33 (UTC)

Ah, no, it doesn't sound like that at all, unless you're absolutely determined to interpret it that way.

It's really no business of yours, but the first time I brought it up was in speaking to a friend from my own world, as an option in the instance that she returned to the state she showed in some of her memories—because that would be a deadly serious situation, and this would have been a deadly serious option.

Unfortunately for all of us, that murder was not nearly so unique as to qualify as the only awful thing any of us have seen since Doll killed Shu all those seasons ago, only to revive harmlessly when her team won a game.

Edited 2019-12-17 07:59 (UTC)

Oh? Then there's been a time when someone did something awful and you thought "well, they might be redeemable, so that option's not appropriate this time?"

Not in so many words. And I'm less concerned with whether someone can be redeemed than whether they're an active danger.

Doodleman, for example: He is dangerous, but in the way that a storm at sea is dangerous. It is his nature, and proper precautions can be taken to anticipate and avoid that part of him. It makes a difference, too, that it is clear how much he cares for others.

I can give you more examples if you wish. Perhaps even tell you what it was like to care for Dahlia.

You're the one who used the phrase "truly and irredeemably dangerous."

I don't disagree that she doesn't care as much, but God is just as predictable as Doodle. Maybe more so. Again, why do you think your judgment on who's actively dangerous is better than anyone else's?

I don't.

I trust my instincts, but even if I wanted to try to play lawgiver in that way, it wouldn't matter. By its very nature, choosing to permanently lock someone out is a decision that only their unitmates can make—and it would have to be completely unanimous even then.

So, in that regard, the fact that you think God can be controlled is alone enough to save her.

Then you should have left it to us to start with.

Apparently.

[ voice low, even ] In truth, I only contacted Requiem because I did not think it would ever be considered otherwise. And not because I think she owed me any kind of obligation, but because I thought it was a tactic that wouldn't occur to most people.

I don't know if there's a way I could have phrased things that wouldn't have made it seem like I was trying to pressure all of you, but regardless, I clearly failed in that.

We wouldn't have considered it. But not because we're not creative enough at tactics or whatever arrogant thing you're implying now. Because under no circumstances would we do it. That being the case, what exactly was the point of suggesting it to us if it wasn't trying to push us into something we wouldn't do otherwise?

Because I don't think most people would let themselves be hard-hearted enough to think of it. Even if they truly feared what their unitmates might do.

I don't like to think of myself as cruel. But even without most of my memories, war has left its mark on me.

[Just. Gives her a deeply unimpressed look.]

So what, your argument now is that ☆ZRAEL is too nice to think of something like that? You've been through more than all of us? You know we're a unit full of professional killers, non-human beings and the literal manifestation of human hatred, right?

[ unperturbed ]

You're also all very young, particularly now that the Unconquered Sun is gone. Even Requiem and Doodle—they've lived a very long time, but they're also both essentially still youths.

But, especially given that I don't know most of you very well, is it such a terrible thing that I would give you the credit of kindness?

Yes, because it's incredibly condescending. Why do you get to decide who's "young"? Man Eater and I have been here since the beginning. We probably have more experience we actually remember than you do. Again, you're just deciding that you know better than us for totally arbitrary reasons.

And even assuming I accept you're right on all that, doesn't that mean you were suggesting that we "kind youths" do something to our unitmates that's so cruel we wouldn't even consider it as a possibility? And you're still trying to take the moral high ground, here?

[ she sighs ]
Think what you like, Maki. I doubt anyone in the history of humankind has ever won an argument about "maturity," and I have no delusions of being the first.

[ teenagers. why are they like this. ]

I have said all I can, and, if nothing else, I hope it has convinced you that I meant no imposition on ZRAEL's choices. Based on our conversation, I would no longer be comfortable imposing the grey death on another—at least not without learning more on how death works in this place.
So you may give yourself that credit.

...Fine. I'll be glad for that much.

Mostly all you've convinced me of is that rather than thinking your ideas are better than ours because you're more righteous, you also think they're better than ours because we're naive and incompetent. But I guess I'll take the small comfort that you only meant it as benevolent guidance, or whatever, and not an actual direction.

I think you're all quite competent.

I wouldn't go to the trouble of having this kind of long conversation if I didn't think it was worth it.

You're very...... stubborn.
But then, so am I.

[ dipping her head a touch ] May the rest of your day be well.

(no subject)

rollplayinghouse - 2019-12-19 04:06 (UTC) - Expand

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